Acoustic Cover Songs & Original Music Video Blog

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Welcome to the Laptop Sessions music video blog! Here, you'll find cover songs, original music, & music reviews updated every weekday! We hope you enjoy the acoustic covers, free mp3s, chords, tabs, and music reviews here on the site!

Welcome to Day 2 of Jim Fusco’s Rock’n’Roll Christmas! I think you’ll all agree that getting a brand-new recording of a Christmas song you can download for FREE is MUCH better than getting a couple of turtle doves. I mean, what do you even feed those things??

Today’s song is a unique one- it’s a cover of Mavis Staples’ “Christmas Vacation” that she recorded for the movie, “Christmas Vacation”, one of the absolute classics. In fact, we just had our yearly watching of this movie the other night with our friends Bob and Sue. Of course I have the high-definition Blu-Ray version. I just had to see Clark Griswold fall off that ladder in glorious HD!

I actually noticed that Mavis Staples sings a different final verse in the version that begins the movie. I chose to go with the version from the soundtrack, which is the one I’ve been listening to for about ten years now. Over at WCJM Free Internet Radio, we actually named our final Christmas show after the movie and featured this song!

I hope you enjoy tonight’s song. I think I did a pretty good job of recreating the sound without going too late-80s (like the original). This was a fun one to do and really stretched out my vocal chords. And you KNOW I did it in the original key. Take care, everyone, and come back tomorrow for Day 3!

Day 13 is here and I’ve got my last Christmas cover song for you! It’s a tune I’ve been singing to my 4-month old son since he was born. For some reason, I got it in my head that he would like it, so I started singing it to him. Now, it seems like he recognizes it and likes to hear it. So, I may sing it year-round!

“Santa’s Beard” by the Beach Boys is one of those songs you’ve probably heard in passing here and there over the years. It’s a cute tune and I really like the vocals, as always. This ended up being one of the hardest songs to record because of the awesome walking bass line in it. What a project! It really took me a long time to get that down, but now that I did, it’s pretty spot-on to the original, if I do say so myself.

Enjoy “Santa’s Beard” and remember to download all of the rest of the Christmas songs. I’ll be back shortly with the last song in Jim Fusco’s 14 Days of Rock’n’Roll Christmas 2015!

It’s Day 9 here on the 14 Days of Rock’n’Roll Christmas 2015 on the Laptop Sessions music blog! Tonight, I bring you a song that you probably haven’t heard of before. But, that’s okay- as George Carlin said, “When are gonna write some more Christmas songs?”

Today’s song is “Bethlehem”, originally done by the band Chicago. They actually came out with three Christmas albums! I guess they really got into putting that “Chicago sound” onto the holiday classics. But, there were a couple of originals and “Bethlehem” is a really cool tune. It has an interesting beat and some difficult chord changes. The chords themselves are easy ones, but they change very quickly.

The overall sound was a difficult one to get down. My version doesn’t sound exactly like the original, but then again, you haven’t heard the original, so who’s to call me on it?

I hope you like this song- give it a chance! It’s free to download, so it’s not taking much of a chance. I’ll see you tomorrow for Day 10!

Living for years with a friend who made it his business to know, love, and compile Christmas music, I’ve never really taken much ownership of the hundreds of holiday songs that are on my iPod, many of the older and/or more obscure selections having been discovered through him. Of course, there are certain albums that I look forward to hearing every year. These albums are collections of music that really help me get into the spirit of the season, ranging from classics like the Beach Boys’ sixties Christmas album to 2004’s Barenaked for the Holidays.

The problem I encountered last year was that the albums were easy to isolate in my iTunes, but the individual tracks from artists that I only listen to at Christmas time were more difficult to call up. Some of the more legendary singers are easy to remember, like Bing Crosby and Burl Ives, but it is still inconvenient to flip between artists after every song or two.

This year, I was struck by the desire to hear the songs I missed last season, so I woke up early this morning to sort out all the yuletide tracks. In the end, I had 340 songs in a playlist titled simply “Christmas Collection.” Now, this is an excellent list to play on random when friends or family come over, or when you’re simply looking to mix it up.

But it could also be a drag to suffer through all your least favorite versions of your favorite songs or to keep hoping a song you’re thinking of is coming up next.

Thus, I sorted out my favorite songs into a separate playlist. After I had picked through all 340 tunes, I found myself with 70 songs. Still too many, so I forced myself – forced! – to cut out ten more. With sixty remaining, I set about separating them into three more manageable lists of twenty each.

This is volume one of the creatively titled “Christmas” playlist series!

In this first playlist, I’ve included some of my absolute favorites, like the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick” and the Moody Blues’ “Don’t Need a Reindeer.” I’ve also added some lesser known but equally excellent holiday themed tracks, like Clarence Carter’s “Back Door Santa” (a song I definitely did NOT fully understand when I first heard it at age 12) and Relient K’s “I Hate Christmas Parties.” One of the most difficult decisions for me here was whether to use the original and unarguably classic Band Aid version of “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” In the end, I went with the BnL version, which is on the whole much more listenable, as it’s louder and clearer.

When they remaster the Band Aid version, I may need to revisit this playlist…

I’ll be back with more commentary on the tracks in specific and my process overall next Saturday, so be sure to check back for volume two!

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Christmas Acoustic Original and Cover Songs

When the weather outside is frightful and the fire is so delightful, you know ‘tis the season that comes but once a year… Every Christmas, we love to listen to the classic seasonal tunes that we grew up listening to, and we love to invite new music for the Christmas season into our collections. For free videos of your favorite Christmas songs recorded as cover songs, you need look no farther than the music videos recorded for the Laptop Sessions. Each December, songwriters Jim and Chris look forward to recording covers of their favorite seasonal tunes and posting them online in their video blog entries for other fans to enjoy. Help spread the holiday cheer by visiting http://LaptopSessions.com!

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